Welcome to Hell - I Hate This Job
by Yoloswagsann
Summary: Sock's job becomes much easier when he realizes he can get into Jonathan's house; and he finally succeeds in getting Jonathan to 'punch his own ticket'. But Sock's job isn't half as fun without Jonathan, and who wants to alphabetize the crippling phobias? The two see if they can't cut a deal with the devil. Eventual Sockathan.
1. Chapter 1

AN: So this is my first multi-chapter fanficton and it's also my first Welcome to Hell fanficton. (And the first thing I've posted on this site.) With all the firsts, please cut me a little slack, and PLEASE REVIEW! If you haven't seen Welcome to Hell, click this link- it's like nine minutes. I'll try to update every day.

/zO7BfUKmheo

Sock happily fell into the routine of tormenting Jonathan. Every morning he would be waiting at the bus stop for the grumpy teenager to arrive before following him around all his classes and then following him home. After this he went back to Hell to chill and get some sleep before beating Jonathan to the bus stop the next morning.

During the day, Sock would disrupt Jonathan's classes; (and no one could see him but Jonathan, so he was blamed) steal his things, poke him, try to embarrass him, insult him, tell him to kill himself, and things like that. It seemed to roll off his shoulders like water off a duck. (Much of the reason for this was Sock wasn't great at tormenting. He was homicidal enough, but bringing someone to the brink of suicide required a brand of patience and sadism Sock didn't really possess.) Sock also sort of liked Jonathan; so when he wasn't making himself a nuisance he was being relatively nice and friendly. Jonathan seemed to like him too to an extent, and shared his opinions, laughed and smiled occasionally, and teased him about his hat/hair. A week of this went by, and then Sock found out something important.

He was a demon, and one of his super-awesome demon powers (there weren't many) was that he could walk through objects if he wanted. He learned that on the first day- the revelation was that he could get into Jonathan's house. Whenever he wanted. Having discovered this, Sock vowed to make use of this information. His hours were 9-5, but Mephistopheles encouraged him to torment for longer if he saw fit. Sock definitely saw fit.

The day after this useful epiphany, Sock met up with Jonathan at the bus stop in the morning and they went through their dysfunctional routine as usual. He and Jonathan had had a long, bantering conversation on the bus ride home and Sock waited all of thirty seconds before hovering through the floorboards and landing with a light thud.

"I just realized, I can get into your house whenever I want!"

Jonathan blinked. "That makes sense. Great. Get out of my house." Sock smiled happily, displaying how his canines had begun to elongate a little. "Are you kidding me?" he squeaked "This is gonna be awesome!"

"I hate you. So much." Jonathan muttered.

"You should hate you so much," Sock replied.

Jonathan, to his credit, acted like no one was there. He hated to have someone watching him and judging him all the time, even if it was just a demon trying to get him to off himself. Sock bounced around for the first few minutes, and then scared the shit out of him by threatening to break assorted items around the house. He silently thanked the powers that be that they didn't really own anything exceptionally valuable/breakable. He didn't feel like playing Mortal Kombat with Sock staring over his shoulder or fucking him up or whatever, so he took his homework out of his backpack, threw it on the table and debated whether he hated math or English more.

Sock sat on the back of the chair across from him, but finding boredom with this arrangement he hung by his knees from the light fixture for a bit. Jonathan was halfway done his English essay about the literary integrity of movies (he'd chosen the topic) when Sock poked his head over his work- through Jonathan's head. He quickly pulled out.

Jonathan shook his head. "Ugh, never go through me again." he said firmly. Sock did a slow flip, foot passing through the chair. "'Kay. I dunno what that felt like for you, but it was weird." he said.

Jonathan nodded fervently.

"Watcha writin'?" asked Sock. Jonathan sighed. "Just read it." Sock picked it up and tore it in three. "Dude!" Jonathan exclaimed angrily. Sock shrugged "Tape it," "I'm gonna lose marks for that you asshole." Jonathan said.

"OH MY GOSH,WHAT?! NO!"Sock exclaimed. Jonathan stated hard at him, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic or not. Sock grinned unhelpfully and shrugged. "I'm gonna have to go buy tape." Jonathan said, counting the change in his pocket. "Okay~" replied Sock. Jonathan pulled on his shoes, and out the door he went Sock hovered beside him, going on about Chuck Norris and the virgin islands or something.

They finally reached the store; Jonathan located tape while Sock walked on the ceiling above him, mimicking anything anyone said. "Why isn't there a price on this?" Jonathan muttered, and rolled his eyes as Sock mimicked him. He went to the cashier and waited patiently in line.

"That's all for today?"

"Um, yes."

"That'll be two twenty-five, please."

Jonathan dug irritably in his pockets. "Did that go up?" he asked as politely as he could, face burning.

"Not that I know of, sir." he rolled his eyes. "Okay. Thanks. Next time." he walked out of the store. One of the things he hated most was not having enough money at a store. It was a half a block before he noticed that Sock wasn't there. He hopefully began to run, but remembered Sock knew where he lived and stopped completely, waiting. Sock appeared fifteen seconds later, and tossed Jonathan a roll of tape. "What?" he asked.

"I'm invisible to others," reminded the demon, taking a Snickers bar out of his vest pocket and eating it. Jonathan was about to scold him about this but remembered that he didn't really care, and now had tape. "I could've bought it myself." Jonathan muttered. "Evidently you couldn't. I saved you the trip." retorted Sock.

"Thanks." Jonathan said somewhat sarcastically. They walked in silence for a bit, then Jonathan said "So I've been thinking,"

"About killing yourself?" Sock asked eagerly. "No. So you're hired by Satan or whoever to get me to commit suicide, right?" "Yeaah,"

"If there's a devil, there's a God too, right?"

Sock was silent a moment. "I think so. He's always bringing up a her." he replied.

"Like how?" Jonathan asked.

"Like, 'your hours are 9-5 and you get weekends off. She only gives Sundays off, and I'm the bad guy!' and then he goes on this little rant about how hard his job is." Sock replied with a laugh.

"O-oh. Okay. So there's a Heaven too, then?" Jonathan asked. Sock paused. "I-I think so...sometimes I think I can see it. But how would I know?" he replied. "Cool." said Jonathan, closing the subject.


	2. Chapter 2

"So is your real name Sock?" Jonathan asked in a bored voice. He was completing his math homework, but felt inclined to procrastinate more. "What kind of math are you doing?" questioned Sock. "Pre-calculus. So is it?"

Sock blushed. "No…" he muttered. "What is it?" asked Jonathan.

"N-Napoleon Maxwell Sowachowski." muttered Sock. Jonathan laughed- he couldn't help it- it was just such a silly, flamboyant name for someone equally silly and flamboyant. "Your last name is a freaking hairbrush." Sock said hotly. "Yeah." Jonathan conceded "So who named you?" "Uhh, my parents." replied Sock. "Demons have parents?"

"Not exactly."

"O-kay?"

"I used to be- well, a human. But then I kinda, y'know, died."

"How'd you die?" Jonathan asked. Sock paused. "Suicide," he whispered. Jonathan raised his eyebrows "Whoa. I'm sorry, dude. Were you depressed? Is that why you have to get me to kill myself?" Sock, for some reason, could not bring himself to lie. Homicidal tendencies aside, Sock had been a good kid. Nice, friendly, clever, and unafraid to share his opinions. He was dead, but still basically the same person. He took a deep breath. "No. I killed my parents. And then I killed myself."

"You. You killed your parents?" Jonathan asked uncertainly. This kid, Napoleon Maxwell Sock Sowachowski killed his parents? How old was he, fourteen? At the most?

"In my sleep, actually. I imagine they're upstairs now." Sock stated, hopefulness tinting the last part of his sentence. If anything, this made Jonathan take Sock seriously. Jonathan had seen him singing at the bus stop, stealing tape for him- as a demon for whom getting Jonathan to kill himself was merely situational, a nine-to-five job. Now, Jonathan saw him as something that actually could- and should- be taken seriously. After all, what kind of person kills his parents, even in his sleep? "Oh," replied Jonathan hollowly. "I swear, I didn't mean to do it. I never meant to hurt anyone." Sock whispered.

Jonathan sighed. "You idiot, that's what you're trying to do right now. It's your fucking job."

Sock stared at him as he sunk through the floorboards, and Jonathan noticed for the first time his eyes were hazel green, almost like olives.

Sock hovered a couple inches above his bed, wondering how that could have gone differently. Thomas Jefferson was wrong- the truth did not set you free. There came a sharp knock at the door. "Yeah," he answered. Mephistophilis came in. "Hi Sock, just came in to check on how you're doing with your counterpart."

"Well, I got in a fight with him today...I guess at least he's starting to dislike me."

"Why do you sound so glum about it, kid?"

Sock thought fast. Honest though he was, he didn't completely trust Mephistophilis. "If he's disregarded my opinion, I can't really expect him to listen to me and pull the trigger, can I?"

"Fair point," Mephistophilis mused. "Have you outright told him to punch his ticket?" he asked. "Yeah," replied Sock. Mephistophilis tisked. "Ah, beginner mistake. The smarter thing to do is act as though you want them alive for as long as possible to torment as long as you can. Only the very depressed will listen to 'kill yourself'. And I gave you a tough nut to crack. Should I transfer you?"

"N-no!" Sock exclaimed.

"Are you starting to like this boy?" asked Mephistophilis seriously. "No, I'm just determined to be the one to break him." Sock said.

"Do you have any advice on how to speed it up? Do you know anything about this area?"

"Sowachowski, are you forgetting who you're dealing with?"

"Oh! Right! No sir," Sock replied. "Heh heh, it's cool, Sock. Learn more about him. Figure out what gets under his skin. And when you do, stick your nails in that spot until he feels he has to listen."

"Thanks, Mephistophilis."

"No problemo, Sock. Don't mess up."


	3. Chapter 3

Sock arrived at the bus stop the following morning to find Jonathan already there.

He awkwardly sidled up beside him. Jonathan didn't even spare a glance. Sock looked over, and then quickly snapped his eyes back in front of him. Jonathan gave him a long sided glance and a small scowl; but continued to ignore him. The bus came, and Sock was sharply reminded of his first day of work. Jonathan boarded the bus, and Sock was struck by a sudden idea. He watched the bus drive away and made his way back to Jonathan's house.

Jonathan leaned against the window slouchily, listening to his iPod. Sock wasn't here. It was very strange. Sure, Sock came and went anytime it occurred to him outside his 9-5, five days a week thing; but during work hours he was there. Always. It had only been a couple of weeks, but he was already used to Sock following him around like a shadow. Jonathan vaguely enjoyed being alone, but he couldn't help feeling Sock had abandoned him. He also vaguely wondered what Sock was up to.

Sock walked through Jonathan's front door, and looked around. The house was quiet and dead empty. He then remembered that no one could see or hear him anyway- it didn't matter. He went down to the basement. Two thirds of the basement was your usual average basement of random junk, cobwebs, cement, and that basement smell. The remaining third was Jonathan's bedroom. It had a divider, and the inside of the room had normal walls and linoleum over the cement floor and a small sliver of a window near the ceiling, above ground. Sock could instantly tell why Jonathan liked it. The walls were a weird pale greyish green, so the room was somewhat soft and dark, but looked like it could be cheerful if it tried. His bed was pretending to be made and had a (slightly stained from life) white duvet on it. Two walls were plastered with posters for various bands Sock had mainly never heard of, while the other two remained mysteriously blank. The entire room smelled like Jonathan as well.

Sock took a deep breath and flopped a couple inches above Jonathan's bed. Then he sprung back up again, because he was working! He had decided to take an hour or so to find out a bit about Jonathan, and to learn about people, you have to talk to them. Or ransack their stuff.

Sock chose the latter, and immediately began searching all the usual places. Under the bed, dresser drawers, laundry basket, haphazard pile of CDs.

Finding nothing suspicious/interesting, Sock moved on to more advanced spots. Finally, after much effort and turmoil he found a notebook in Jonathan's pillowcase. He eagerly flipped it open. The first few pages were blank, and then there were drawings. Some were just of vases or circles or trees or teachers or whatever, but some were obviously original. What really stood out to Sock was a pencil drawing of a man being hung with a knife in his eye, and a detailed chart of Plato's allegory of the cave.

Then there was some journal-y stuff. Sock felt a pang of slight guilt as he flipped it open intently and began to read **.**


	4. Chapter 4

Holy crap.

Jonathan was depressed. Admittedly not super depressed, and not diagnosed, but it now made a lot more sense why Mephistophilis had assigned Sock to him in the first place. He undoubtedly needed a good shove to actually kill himself, but according to this, Socks job was less difficult than he had anticipated. Sock, however, still had his work cut out for him. Jonathan, apparently, was of the school of thought that he would die anyway, why would he inconvenience himself and his father by speeding it up? He had also written that he could handle that bleak, what's-the-point feeling, it was being mad that screwed him up.

Sock was conflicted by this. Firstly, he was doing his job, at least a little; so that was good! But Jonathan was depressed? He liked Jonathan, he didn't want him to….well, actually did. But he shouldn't want him to die, right? What really had Sock weirded out was that there were a few mentions of his dad, but why did he never mention his mom?

Well, he would just keep driving Jonathan to suicide, he guessed. He had to.

Jonathan had a very happy, Sock-free morning. Math was still math, however and P.E. was still P.E., and the freaking human race was still the human race; and he was bored to tears by the end of the morning. Figurative tears, mind, but since he hadn't been listening to his iPod/Sock all morning, he'd actually listened to other people talk (having no one to talk to himself) and discovered he now had a rep as the crazy kid. Well, he'd tried to be subtle talking to Sock. There that went. And so, as he sat there eating his sandwich at lunch, he didn't mind all that much when Sock materialized. "Hi Jon~!" Sock exclaimed happily.

"You're back." observed Jonathan astutely. "Yep! Did ya miss me?" Sock asked.

"No." answered Jonathan mostly truthfully. "Ouch." said Sock vaguely before sitting down beside Jonathan and watching him eat.

"I fricking hate science." Jonathan muttered under his breath.

"Well _I_ like it." Sock replied, floating cross-legged above the desk next to him. They were doing preparation for dissections, and Jonathan wasn't particularly fussy on it. "Y'know what it reminds me of?" Sock asked in a low voice, leaning closer even though no one could see or hear him. When Jonathan didn't respond, he continued anyway. "This~" he sang, pulling up his sweater vest and t-shirt to reveal a completely gruesome stab-wound. Jonathan's eyebrows shot up. "What the fu-" everyone in the class's head turned and he blushed and looked down at his desk. "Damn it Sock," he murmured. Sock smiled ear to ear. "Please put your shirt back on." Said Jonathan.

Sock wiggled his eyebrows "Is it distracting you?" he asked seductively. "I may puke, so yes." Jonathan muttered. "You're actively bleeding, by the way." he continued. Sock looked down at his stab-wound. "Cool!" he exclaimed.

"Shhh, I can't hear." Jon muttered, ignoring the stare he was getting from the kid next to him.

"I hate life, Sock. Cheer me up." Said Jonathan one Saturday morning.

It was around eleven o'clock, and he was sitting on his bed eating dry Alpha-Bits.

"I think you're mistaken about what my job is, Jonathan." Sock replied.

Jonathan threw his Alpha-Bits across the room, and they scattered on his floor. "I fucking hate Alpha-Bits," he muttered.

"Yesterday you said it was okay dry." observed Sock.

"I hate dry cereal." said Jonathan "And today is your day off. You don't have to tell me to kill myself all day, or be here at all, actually." he concluded. Sock sniffed "Are you telling me to go to Hell?" he asked with false sadness. Mephistopheles and his clever situational puns were clearly rubbing off.

"Yeah." said Jonathan lacklusterly.

"Y'know what? Fine. Today we'll just hang out like normal people!" declared Sock.

"Not possible, and I was hoping you'd leave." replied Jonathan, staring wistfully at the cereal on the floor. "C'mon buddy, what do you do with your friends?" Jonathan snickered. "You've been following me around for like three weeks. Have you not noticed I have none?"

"I'm your friend!" Sock announced. "Kill yourself." replied Jonathan. "Been there, done that." Sock told him. "Let's do something fun today." "Okay- what?" Jonathan asked.

Sock thought for a moment. "Strip chess." he suggested. Jonathan rolled his eyes. "I can't play chess, you freak. Or poker."

"Ugh, fiiiiiiiine. We could get coffee."

"That's boring. And overpriced. And I hate coffee." Jonathan speculated.

"Wet blanket." Sock told him. Jonathan nodded.

"Let's just go for a walk and think of something then," Sock said.

"'Kay. Go away, I need to get dressed."

Sock didn't move. "I haaaaaaaaaate you~" Jonathan said. He dug out a different shirt and pulled it over his head. "No seriously, get the Hell out of here." Sock did and Jonathan proceeded to get dressed.

The boy and his demon went out and walked.

Jonathan and Sock walked for a bit, (Sock glided) then Sock had a revelation. "Today's Saturday!"

"Yeah. Your _day off."_

Sock dismissed this with a wave of his hand. "We should go to the art gallery."

Jonathan swerved around at Sock, causing a couple odd glances from passersby. "There's an art gallery in this city?" he asked.

"Duh."

"Where, dude?"

Sock though for a moment. "Right down that street." Jonathan shrugged and walked down that street.

"Dude, I didn't bring any money."

"Just go in."

"What?"

"I wanna see how far you get. Just look like you know what you're doing."

Jonathan took a deep breath, and grinned. "Okay,"

He put on his most apathetic, bored face, and walked in, chin up, staring straight ahead. The woman at the front desk was preoccupied with a family, and didn't notice Jonathan stroll nonchalantly past.

As soon as he was out of sight he booked it down a flight of stairs and pretended to be interested in the (honestly quite pathetic) display of Notan. The gallery was deserted. He turned to Sock.

"So what now?


	5. NOT AN UPDATE

THIS IS NOT AN UPDATE.

SORRY.

I've been inactive for a hella long time; because I have a new account. I'm currently writing a different story (transtalia), so I won't continue with this one. Yet.

I will finish this one day, and bring balance to the force. But not until later. This could potentially take up to a year, depending on how frequently I manage to update. Thanks.

(my new account name is defensivelime)


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